Stephan Grill

Stephan Grill, MPI-CBG Dresden Core expertise: motor systems Our group is interested in how molecular machines, the workhorses of the cell, function and interact to form the dynamical processes that are observed in living organisms. We pursue a combined theoretical and experimental approach, with a focus on two systems that reach from the scale of a single molecule to the scale of a single cell.

Transcriptional Systems. We study the mechanisms underlying the movement of RNA Polymerase along its DNA template, a mechanism that is responsible for generating the RNA copy of DNA for later protein production. We follow individual molecules as they move along the template and build physical models to provide an understanding of the physical mechanisms that underlie copy error removal, the cooperation amongst many enzymes, and distinct kinetic mechanisms when comparing different types of RNA polymerases, to relate their biophysical modes of operation to their respective roles in organismal biology and evolution.

Cytoskeletal Systems. We study the mechanisms underlying cytoskeletal dynamics during the early growth of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, where we look at how the cell is able to break symmetry and to generate to distinct ends in a process called cortical polarization in asymmetric cell division. We are describing the mechanical basis of this symmetry breaking event in terms of coarse grained hydrodynamic description of the active cell cortex and study the biological regulation of this material in experiments.